Ogof Ffynnon Ddu 2 (top) Skyhook (& beyond) Photography Mission

Wednesday April 1st 2026

Members present: Adrian Turner,  Asher Goodwin,  Erika Lang,  Tyler Hudson,  Viki Smyth

I’d been saying for the last two nights that my next day would be a rest day, but alas each potential rest day was foiled by too-tempting of a cave trip. This day it was a photography trip to Skyhook. Viki had promised that the biggest crystal pool ever would be waiting for me, and that I would be allowed to take all the pictures I wanted.

We bimbled into Top, combining the start of our trip with the Northern Lights gang. Nuala installed an efficient roll-call system, which made sure we never lost any of our 9 members. Plus Ben, who was banned from taking a number (Nuala’s last hurrah of terrorism as Welfare).

The Northern Lights people left us at the bottom of Skyhook. Ade and Asher went to set up some lighting, while Viki started rigging the funky pull-through. About 15 minutes after they left, I heard Sophie’s voice again, shouting for me to come back to the climb as they had accidentally kept going with one of our bags they had been carrying for us.

We made it up Skyhook and were immediately impressed by the pretty formations at the top. We wandered through some more passage, eventually splitting in half so Ade and Asher could do some professional photography, while me, Viki and Tyler carried on to see if we could make it to the Marble Showers traverses. We continued on through many formation-filled passages. Every time the tape ended we thought that was it, and then we’d turn a corner to find more tape and more pretties. The coolest one had to be the Stalactite that transformed into a curtain, which flowed down into a straw and then joined a stalagmite, with a teeny tiny helictite coming off the side.

I was freezing for the whole journey, probably because I had foregone my thermal leggings because they were far too stinky by day 3, and I was incredibly tired. Since we were going to Top I hadn’t expected to be that cold, but all these passages seemed to have some cold draft constantly blowing through them. I made Tyler and Viki huddle either side of me while I ate my Trek bar and tried not to drop any crumbs near the pretties. My tiredness meant that I was stumbling quite a lot and struggling to keep myself upright (which was not ideal while walking through endless narrow passages filled with countless untouched formations).

Eventually we made it to the freshly bolted pitches that Viki wanted to try and rig. They were quite spectacular and incredibly out of character for a Wales cave. They could have been taken straight from the Dales. We got down and explored some more pretty passages. A very cool, right-angled helictite was probably the highlight here.

We got to Marble Showers, observed the very scary ‘just die’ traverse, and turned around (with just a couple more pictures). Tyler nearly stumbled into a bunch of very big stalactites, but managed to right himself just in time and ran back to me for a reassuring hug: “Erika, hold me!”

We started racing up the pitches since we had realised that we’d actually been quite a long time, and also that I was supposed to me making dinner that night and it was already like 8pm. We found Ade and Asher again, left Tyler with them since Viki decided that the best course of action to make our callout and save dinner would be to “just take Erika and run”. So that’s what we did.

We made it our of Top in record time and raced down the hill to the rather worried and hungry cavers back at the hut. I began delegating chopping duties and had dinner almost ready by the time Ade, Asher and Tyler also made it back to us.

I was incredibly cold and exhausted for the entire trip, and during the sandy traverses coming out of Marble Showers I begged Viki to make sure I didn’t cave the next day. They promised to growl at anyone who tried to make me, which of course prompted Tyler to say “Hey Erika, do you want to go to Cwm Dwr tomorrow?”. The following snarl was rather impressive and very funny.

Overall a fantastic trip, and we all got some pretty awesome photos from it. I would very much like to go back.